GADAG: Finally, the residents of Dawal Malik village in the district have agreed to get vaccinated against Covid-19, but only after health department officials warned that they would declare the village an ‘unsafe place’. The trick seems to have worked, with 90 villagers getting vaccinated on Monday.
Health officials and ASHA workers, including the taluk administration, first organised a camp in the first week of June, but no villagers turned up. The staff went to each house to vaccinate seniors and women, if they did not wish to come out. But the entire village declined to take the jab.
The argument of the villagers was that Dawal Malik, a Sufi saint whose dargah is in the village, would save them from the pandemic, so they don’t need vaccination. The taluk administration was worried as other villages have already reached 70 per cent vaccine coverage, but only 4 villagers of Dawal Malik are vaccinated.
On August 25, officials again visited the village and warned villagers that a board would be displayed, saying that nobody in the village was vaccinated, and no outsider, even devotees of Dawal Malik, would be allowed to enter the village. They gave them a week’s time to think it over. Finally, the villagers agreed to take the jab, and 130 villagers were vaccinated in the past two days.